You’re Not Just a Garden Center, Not Anymore.

“Most companies must realize that they are no longer competing against the guy down the street or the brand that sells similar products. Instead, they’re competing with every other experience a customer has. This presents an opportunity for forward-thinking brands to create positive experiences that customers want to talk about to others. It also suggests that customer experience professionals should be monitoring the experience at a wide variety of companies and industries for inspiration.” said Dan Gingiss, author and customer experience expert.

According to Salesforce.com, 73% of customers say that an
extraordinary experience with one company raises their expectations of others.

So, what is customer engagement and what does it really
mean for your business today? A quick google search will tell you that customer
engagement is the means by which a company creates a relationship with its customer
base to foster brand loyalty and awareness. This can be accomplished
via marketing campaigns, new content created for and posted to websites, and
outreach via social media and mobile and wearable devices, among other
methods.(footnote) In order to uncover what that means for your
business, Salesforce.com surveyed more than 8,000 consumers and businesses across
the globe for their third edition of the “State of the Connected Customer” report.

If you would rather not read the report, you can see
below some interesting things that came from their research.

Customers’ happiness
depends as much on the quality of a company’s engagement as the
quality of the product or service they’re buying

Customers are
increasingly open to companies using new technologies to improve their
experiences

Personalization,
timeliness, and connectivity are the three foundations of exceptional customer
engagement

Ethics and trust are key
to winning customers’ business and loyalty

54% of customers think companies need to
fundamentally transform how they engage. New technology allows cutting-edge
companies to engage with their customers in completely new and better ways.

So, what do we know about
the sort of things customers now expect?

Customers expect
companies to understand what they want BEFORE they ask. That might mean serving
up a personalized offer or proactively reaching out to prevent a potential
issue that might arise for customers.

Customers expect to pick
the time and place. The best companies engage with their customers on the
channel or device that the customer prefers, not the one that’s most
convenient for the company — whether that’s online, over the phone, via a
smartphone app, or a voice assistant.

Customers don’t care
about your organizational model. Basically, if a customer talks to someone
in marketing one day, they expect customer service to know about it — and use
that information to help them — the next day. That means it’s crucial for
companies to build a single, database of their customers, shared across
all departments.

As people familiarize
themselves with exceptional new digital customer experiences, they start to
expect the same standard from everyone they do business with.

It’s crucial that companies meet that standard. “Customers have so much power now. In the consumer world of social platforms, every single person has a voice. The rewards of harnessing your most ardent fans are amazing, but customers will also be very vocal when they are displeased. So, knowing your customers and understanding their needs has become critical to success, no matter what industry you’re in.” said Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh, EVP of Industries at Salesforce.

Every time Amazon raises the bar in retail, for example, it also does so for banking, healthcare, hospitality, and every other industry.

“We have a divide. There are some companies and some products we use that provide such a perfect, seamless experience that they have raised the bar. In fact, they’re so easy and seamless that we kind of forget to be impressed. But that is making the ones that don’t have that kind of great experience all the more obvious.” said Dr. Susan Weinschenk, Chief Behavioral Scientist and Chief Executive Officer at consulting firm The Team W.

Their research found that
84% of customers say the experiences provided by a company are as important
to them as its products and services. That’s up from 80% in last
year’s survey. In other words, the quality of
customer experience you can deliver is becoming a powerful leading indicator of
your future success.

Mark Nelms is a Business Development Manager for Soft Intelligence. He has conducted over 400 interviews with retailers from almost every vertical and size. In prior roles he’s assisted clients like Cumberland Packaging Corporation (Sweet N’ Low), The New England Patriots, and NCR (National Cash Register.)